


The New Arrangement

by EnchantressEmily



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Asexual Relationship, Domestic Fluff, M/M, Queerplatonic Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-17 09:37:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18962632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnchantressEmily/pseuds/EnchantressEmily
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley's relationship has changed since the world almost ended, but they're not sure exactly what to call it.





	The New Arrangement

Neither Aziraphale nor Crowley quite knew how it had come about.

After the failed Apocalypse, they had both found themselves seeking out the other’s company more than usual.  There was something comforting about being around the only other person who fully understood what had happened – and what had nearly happened – that night at the air base.

Also (though neither of them admitted this aloud), the risk of losing your oldest friend made you realize how much they meant to you.  Crowley still had nightmares about running into the burning bookshop to look for Aziraphale.  (And yes, sleeping was a human habit he had picked up, but when had he started _dreaming_ , for… whoever’s sake?)

For the most part they avoided talking about the recent events; instead they discussed Aziraphale’s latest additions to his book collection, the state of Crowley’s plants, that new little restaurant that had opened down the street, and other such topics.  The normality of it was oddly reassuring.

 

“You know something, angel?” Crowley said one day over lunch.

“Hmm?” Aziraphale murmured abstractedly, studying the menu.

“Silly of me, maybe, but I thought things would be different.  After… you know.”  Crowley waved a hand at the other patrons of the restaurant.  “I thought everything that happened might scare people toward your side – changing their ways and so on.  But they’re just going on the same as ever.”

Aziraphale lowered the menu and looked at him in bemusement, an expression his mild face was well suited for.  “You sound like me, dear boy.  Aren’t you normally the cynical one?”

“Yeah, well,” Crowley muttered, embarrassed.  “It’s just… something like the end of the world, you’d expect it to have _some_ kind of effect.”

“But the world didn’t end,” Aziraphale said.  He reached across the table to touch Crowley’s hand briefly.  “That was the point of everything we did, wasn’t it?  To make it possible for humanity to go on the same as it always has.”

“And for _us_ to go on the same as we always have,” Crowley said.

“Yes, that too,” Aziraphale conceded.

 

But it wasn’t quite the same. 

More and more often Aziraphale would take a book (or two, or three) and spend the day reading in Crowley’s flat while Crowley fussed with his electronics or threatened his houseplants, simply because it was more pleasant than sitting alone in his shop.  When they had one of their drinking sessions, Crowley had taken to spending the night on the battered old sofa in Aziraphale’s back room instead of going home to an empty flat.  (He often woke to find that the angel had draped a blanket over him, and he no longer even minded that it was tartan.)  Soon they were spending more time with each other than not, so that moving in together wasn’t so much a decision as a natural progression of events.

Where exactly they would move into, however, was a question that required a good deal of argument to settle.

“I run a business here,” Aziraphale said.  “It’s not reasonable for me to live halfway across town.  And besides – well, to be perfectly honest, my dear, that flat of yours is too modern for me.  It feels so unlived in.”

Crowley snorted.  “And yours doesn’t?  You don’t even own a bed!”

“Well, no, but at least I have comfortable chairs.  You should know; you’ve slept in them often enough.”

Crowley decided not to answer that one.  “There’s always the bus or the tube,” he said, going back to the angel’s initial objection.  “Or I could run you to work.  It does the Bentley good to get out regularly.”

“And it’s another excuse for you to drive like a maniac through the middle of London, I suppose,” Aziraphale said, but it was only a halfhearted complaint.  He adjusted the gold-rimmed half-moon glasses perched on his nose (he didn’t need them, of course, but he liked the way they looked).  “Very well.  But I get to bring in at least two bookshelves – _and_ some comfortable chairs.”

 

Crowley’s flat was no longer as sleek and modern-looking as it had been.  His sound system and television jostled for space with bookshelves full of leatherbound volumes, and the white leather sofa had been joined by two squashy tweed armchairs.  There were even doilies under some of the plants.

Crowley occasionally looked around at it and wondered what had happened.  Where had his style gone?  How would anyone take him seriously as the kind of human he wanted to be if he lived in a place like this?

On the other hand, if the kind of man he resembled moved in with the kind of man Aziraphale resembled, their shared living space would probably look very much like this.  Perhaps it still fit with his persona after all. 

After being friends for six thousand years, it was relatively easy for the angel and the demon to fit into one another’s daily routines.  A few ground rules were established early on (no spoiling the plants by working miracles on the ones that aren’t growing well; no pestering Aziraphale while he’s reading unless it’s really urgent).  Crowley did the cooking; Aziraphale handled the household finances.  It was a satisfactory arrangement all round.

Living together also seemed to make it easier to show physical affection.  It felt natural now to walk down the street hand in hand or sit leaning against each other.  Crowley would come into the bookshop and drop a kiss on Aziraphale’s mop of blond hair as he sat at his desk, making the angel blush and smile. 

All this, inevitably, led onlookers to draw certain conclusions about their relationship.

 

“I had a weird conversation at the druggist’s today,” Crowley said.  He was lounging on the sofa with his legs draped over the arm and his head pillowed on Aziraphale’s well-padded middle.  “The bloke at the till – you know, the red-haired one – kept trying to talk me into buying this new kind of condom they’ve got in.  Banana-flavored, if you can believe it.”

Aziraphale frowned.  “Whyever would he think you needed something like that?”

Crowley sighed.  As intelligent as the angel was, sometimes he needed things spelled out.  “People see you and me together, and they assume we’re having sex,” he explained patiently.

“Oh.”  Aziraphale considered this, playing absently with a lock of Crowley’s dark hair.  “Ought we to?  It just seems so… messy, all those things humans do in bed.  Beautiful and sacred, of course, between people who love each other,” he added hastily.  “But messy.”

“Nah.  This suits me fine.”  Crowley stretched lazily.  “Let people think whatever they want.  They will anyway.”

Aziraphale was silent for a while.  “What _are_ we, then?” he asked suddenly.  “ ‘Flatmates’ is too impersonal.  ‘Lovers’ implies what you say people are assuming, so it’s inaccurate.  There really doesn’t seem to be a suitable word.”

“Huh.”  Crowley propped himself on his elbows to think this over.  “Boyfriends?”

Aziraphale wrinkled his nose.  “Too juvenile.  Gentleman friends?”

“Absolutely not, angel.  That one went out with the Victorians.  Why not just ‘partners’?”

“I suppose,” Aziraphale agreed reluctantly.

Crowley raised one eyebrow (a skill he had spent a considerable amount of time acquiring in the eighteenth century).  “What?  It’s a common term these days for people living together.”

“Yes, but it… it isn’t _enough_.”  Aziraphale gestured vaguely.  His glasses were slipping down his nose, and Crowley resisted the urge to reach up and push them back into place; it might derail his train of thought, and Crowley wanted to see where he was going with this.  “You’re more than a partner, or even a lover.  You’ve been a part of my life for six thousand years, give or take; you’re the only being who knows me as myself.  You’re… well, you’re _everything_.  I don’t know how to get that into a single human word, and I don’t want to devalue it by settling for a lesser term.”

“Then don’t try,” Crowley said.  He lay back with his head in Aziraphale’s lap again.  “We’re not exactly ordinary humans, so who says we have to define ourselves by ordinary words?  We can just let our relationship be… well…”

“Ineffable?” Aziraphale suggested, smiling.

“Yeah, something like that.”

Aziraphale bent down to kiss Crowley’s forehead.  “You’re very wise for a demon, my dear.”

“Doesn’t take much to be wiser than Hastur and that lot,” Crowley said, but he was smiling too.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm asexual, and the sexy Aziraphale/Crowley fanfic and fan art out there makes me kind of uncomfortable, but I like the ones where they're just cuddling or kissing... so this happened. 
> 
> (No offense intended to people who write, draw, or enjoy that kind of thing - it's just not to my personal taste.)


End file.
